History of TastySpleen

[ReCycled]

I remember the days of the Bot plagues and the "weapons no stay" format - frustrating beyond belief. We used to yell at Pretzel (in console) to leave them on for a match or 2 and she would sometimes comply. Otherwise it was nothing but blaster nonsense. I also remember pinging real good there (low 60's from Canada) for a couple years anyway. Then the next Administration took over and improvements steadily came week after week and continue to this day. Alas as the quality of the server improved, Internet traffic has relentlessly degraded connections (unless you live in Texas) and make it tough sometimes.
But all in all - a great job by the current team.

     

[[BTF]Gator]

In my early days i stuck to kansas.net and Gumby's Graveyard.  i rarely strayed.  But i do recall xquake setting up sometime before i left the game.  i remember how mind blowing it was to have these servers that were attached to each other, and the fact that you could travel between them at will.  i recall the first time someone told me about it before i had been there.  i visualized there were actual portals in maps you would walk through to go to the other servers (still a cool idea).

Then my first memory of today's TastySpleen is from probably June or so of '04.  i recall my first game was on mutant and there were cows and a penguin or two.  i distinctly recall how frustrating it was trying to shoot the darn cows.  Hitting the model with a railgun, but missing the hitbox.  i recall Matster, QuakeDuke, Spike, and i think JQuest being there in that game and beating me brutally.  i couldnt land a shot on thier bovine asses.  i can still recall the first map and game there, funny.  Can't name it, but i can see it.  Its still in rotation on mutant i think, i recall getting a similar beating on it from gyn a couple months ago.

Anyways, around the time of my first game at mutant, i was just starting to break away from >FAS>.  We had our own BTF Servers i was running from home.  The majority of the clan lived right here in town.  There was me, my dad Big Basser, deftone, snook, zandar, deadbeat, and angel of death and borntofrag/hamstar both of which where from germany.  Anyways, we had a tight little community and fragged every evening.  The server seemed to attract several locals.  Hydro used to come there often.  But it was a real small community.  It was an ffa dm server that spawned with rail.  i remember how much it bothered old school tdm players spawning with rail cuz it messed with the player routing/traffic so much.  There was no more area camping railguns.   i recall redio being the biggest complainer about it.

Well, as time went on, we started to stray away from our local servers and spend more time at TastySpleen.  Then there was the first TS tourney.  Around that time BTF started taking on alot of members too.  It wasnt intentional.  We werent trying to grow or anything, there were just so many fun to be around attitudes i would pester them to join the family until they finally got sick of me asking and gave in.

Anyways, eventually i tried running some servers for TastySpleen from my home.  There was WallHackers, DM1mods, and others.  But nobody played there cuz thier pings sucked.  Or so i thought.  Eventually i got a nice machine not too far from TS, and moved them all there, and added a ton more, but they still sit empty.    i guess quadz has the basics down so well there hasnt been much desire for much else.  To this day Vanilla and DM get the most mileage.

The atmosphere has changed some around TastySpleen.  It used to feel so much smaller then it does today, although then i thought it felt huge compared to where i had come from.  However, i'd say there is at least twice the volume and traffic there was when i started coming in mid '04.

i'm very curious to see what becomes of the future of TastySpleen.  Quake2 is more or less the only game i play.  i fart around with one or two others at any given time (right now its Call of Duty which i have barely touched in the last few months, and GT Legends is my biggest distraction currently from q2), but i usually get bored of them within a few months.  No game has ever hooked me so hard or produced such feelings of love for it like q2 has.  i do hope and pray that TastySpleen has a very, very long life.  i'm hoping for as long as i live.  Is that expecting too much i wonder?  i think the core group of players can and will keep it alive for many, many years.  The biggest unknown to me is how many people will keep coming.  i wonder how the q2 population will continue to maintain, grow, or decrease as time goes on.  The journey will be interesting for sure, no matter what direction things head in.

i think TastySpleen has been an incredibly interesting social/gaming experiment.  i feel it is different in many ways and many strong positive ways.  i feel the complete open-mindedness and objective attitudes of teh admins at TastySpleen are what have created the large player base, and long life of the servers.  i do think it is a rarity in gaming to have so many positive attitudes, intelligent minds, and technically able people together in one place with a common goal.  And i think that is what has made it a success.

Good Job Everyone(players and admins alike).

[Hydro-cru]

Who can forget Swinging Beef!!!

[Hydro-cru]

Thu Jun 25 22:19:37 CDT 1998

 i have finally gotten around to writing a web page. The Quake Server has been up about a week now, with sustained evening traffic since Sunday. Not bad for no advertising, but I think GameSpy and Kali have helped a little bit.

There is just one game running now. In the future there will be more, but I havn't got them up yet. I'm currently looking into lmctf, but and not quite sure which ctf to start with. I've never played capture the flag, so I am going into terra nova here.

If there is any particular game you are interested in that runs under a unix server, please let me know. I've heard that ctf, rocket areana, and lithium are all good, but like I said, this is new territory for me. You can reach me at boom@xquake.net - DOJO

[DWxchzrles]

and then God made vibes.
and He said "Damn! what the fuck was I thinking?".

 

from the same individual that says can outrun a bullet.

must be superman!

i don't think so

[Art]

Quadz has already given some of the inside on tastyspleen, and who better to do so than the one who makes it tick. As he said, you have to go back to xquake to fully appreciate tastys history, and how it evolved. Although some of the twchnical details have already been mentioned, I'd like to share some of the lesser known trivia about xquake.

I'm not exactly sure when xquake came online (I see Husker has already answered this) or when I discovered it but I'm guessing that I was playing there in 1998. Of all the q2 servers worldwide at the time (10,000+), xquake by far had the best dialup connect for me, which was down to a 150 ping in 2002 when I finaly got cable.

Xquake was surely the wild west of q2 servers during its time. With a hands off admin (Cederberg), it was anything goes. I've always attributed this as one of the major factors of its popularity. Players could say what they wanted and play how they wanted without the threat of any disciplinary actions against them. This invited dialog and conversations that you would NEVER hear on any ohther game server, for any length of time. We are by nature social animals and chat inhances sociability, right? (look at the popularity of this forum) Other major factors that contributed to xquakes popularity included the outstanding connect by players from all over the country (and outside the country as well), and the map/game formats. While most other servers were running 8 dm maps, xquake was running all the single player maps. When it came to FFA, xquake was THE happening place. The server was populated 24/7 most of the time. If you wanted FFA on dm maps, there were no shortage of decent servers that catered to this, including kansasnet(kcnet) and hals aftershock.

Of course this hands off admin policy was a double-edged sword, as you can imagine. At some time or another, cheats started making their way into the xquake server. An early version of Q2admin (v1.0 I think) was installed, but due to the type of OS running on the box (freeBSD), later q2admin versions caused instability and Xquake quickly got stuck with outdated cheat protection. The server rapidly became popular with cheaters due to lack of admin and got to the point that you could rarely play an entire map without an aim assisted player showing up and taking over. I normally just went to the side, watched and waited him out. I spent alot of time watching cheaters (assisted aim), but that's a different thread The most notorious xquake cheat of all time was "Swinging Beef"

[DWxchzrles]

thanks art

enjoyed your post

[Hydro-cru]

LOL, I remember Karen banning me for camping

[Kyper]

I'm definitely the wrong person to talk about this. I bet dael or someone else can shed a much brighter light on this...

Anyway, I remember learning about tastyspleen toward the end of the q2players.org community (the website and forums, anyway). First, there was this server called LostOurMinds OSP, or something like that. I don't think it was directly related to TS, but some people from that community played on there. Whatever the case, the players from q2p showed them a lot more than a thing or two.

Members from the q2p community were referred to as 'GameSpy-ers' for some reason. I guess that term was coined 'cause of the client used to find the TS servers. Well, it was fairly clear that the q2p community was more skilled than what TS had to offer. A few cheater comments and stuff were thrown around of course, but luckily a bridge formed between the two groups. Surely it was a joyous day for the NAQ2 scene, as it felt like two long lost brothers were re-united. But q2p would be the bigger older brother for sure, heh. People like naymlis and daelmun were key in the development of TS's TDM scene (well, I believe naym was 'cause I remember his high post count heh). Those tutorials that dael wrote really helped increase the general knowledge of the TS community.

So, some stuff happened, q2p taught TS a couple of things and TS brought new players for TDM games and new servers to play on. Eventually, evilpope stopped paying for q2players.org domain after multiple threats of doing so (2005, 2006? I forget). Everyone from q2p jumped ship to TS.

I'm sure a lot of that information is wrong. Oh well, I blame my damaged brain cells. I think somewhere in that period of time some q2p people camped out at CHTV before coming to TS, or was that people camped out at CHTV while the q2p website was on hiatus? Or both? Hell, I forget.

[Whirlingdervish]

I was snooping through older posts this morning, and found a hilarious and historic moment that everyone should see:

http://tastyspleen.net/quake/forums/index.php?topic=2341.msg32793#msg32793


I believe this was the beginning of the end for Granny...

[[BTF] Reflex]

But,  is it history?

[Whirlingdervish]

well, he is.
 

[DWxchzrles]

well, he is.
 

and not missed at all

[vibes]

He sure got some of this community hopping.

[Art]

LOL, I remember Karen banning me for camping

LOL Husker, I remember a couple admins giving Pretz all kinds of shit for banning you. I silently followed these constant arguments over your ban for several days untill the others had all but given up. Shloo then wanted to know why I hadn't said anything about the matter and requested I talk to Pretz about it. The next time she logged in, I told her "Pretz, I've got a request".  She said "sure Art, what is it". I said "I'd like for you to unban Husker". She said "I'll do that right now Art", which she promptly did.  LOL, not the response I was anticipating, but simple as that.